Randall #02 - Ghost Writers in the Sky Read Online Free Page A

down and felt my face flush when I saw my skirt had ripped halfway up the side. The grizzle-bearded speaker—costumed as something between Texas oil man and singing cowboy—touched the brim of his Stetson.
    “ I’m Toby Roarke.”
    He motioned me to the stage.
    “ Better introduce yourself, Mrs. Kahn—or whatever you call yourself now.”
    I ignored the dig, as well as the way Roarke grinned into my cleavage. Positioning myself behind the lectern, I hid what I could of my shredded skirt.
    “ I’m using my maiden name again—Camilla Randall.” I beamed an exaggerated smile at Mr. Roarke. “I’ll be giving a workshop on writing the advice column. My nom de plume is the Manners Doctor. People do confuse me with Miss Manners, and I adore her, but she is about three decades older, so…”
    I hoped I was making sense. My body still vibrated from the Harley’s engine.
    Toby Roarke harrumphed and rocked back on his Tony Lama heels.
    “ Any questions for Ms.…um, whatever, before we get back to our critiques?”
    Unfortunately, several hands waved. A pretty, over-made-up young woman in Donna Karan stood. “Can you get Jonathan Kahn to read my book?” Her speech had a Hispanic inflection. She waved a bulging gold folder. “It’s all, like, kinky sex in the news business. Since you’re into that scene…”
    I feared my smile muscles might cramp, but I managed to say, “I’m not in contact with Mr. Kahn.” So much for escaping the Post.
    A red-faced man rose to his feet and spoke with a plummy Oxbridge British accent.
    “ Forget your ex, Miss Manners. I have a book that’s right up your street: “ The Story of O and Zombies …”
    So the Post article had gone international.
    A grandmotherly woman interrupted.
    “ Didn’t you hear her? She’s not Miss Manners. Miss Manners would never dress like that. Miss Manners is a lady.”
      Toby Roarke laid a heavy hand on my arm.
    “ Honey, whatever you call yourself, I don’t think it’s ‘Cowboy.’ And this is called the Cowboy Critique Workshop. That Cowboy would be, um, me. You wanna take a seat and let me get on with business?”
    That would be the moment, of course, when my heel broke off—just as I stepped down from the podium. I removed the shoe and limped to a seat, clutching the shoe and severed heel. As a first post-divorce public appearance, this wasn’t going well.
    Roarke read from a list in a passive-aggressive whisper.
    “ Ernesto Cervantes. You’re up to read.” The room hushed, but no one stood. “Where is the lovely Ernesto?” Roarke hooked his thumbs into his tooled leather belt. “Does our peroxide bombshell have another date with Miss Clairol? I’ll have to let somebody have his reading slot...”
    As writers thrust up hands like eager schoolchildren, a bleached-blonde, dark-skinned young man rushed in.
    “ If you’re fixin’ to read us your deathless prose, you better get to it, boy.”
    The teenager’s muscled chest heaved under his “Sin City” T-shirt as he made an effortless leap up to the stage. He gave the crowd an endearing grin.
    I wanted to run up and save him from whatever the Cowboy had in store. In spite of a crude, tough-guy tattoo on his forearm, he looked like a vulnerable child.
    “ This story is called El Despertador Looks at the Stars .” He looked a little nervous as he started to read. “First there is a quote—‘we may all be in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars’—Oscar Wilde said that.” 
    “ No, he didn’t!” Toby jumped down from the stage, spurs jingling. Swaggering down the aisle, he let his hand brush the exposed shoulder of the pretty Donna Karan girl. “Wilde said, ‘We are all in the gutter, not ‘may all be.’ Lady Windemere’s Fan , Act III.”
    Ernesto flipped through his conference folder, looking confused, then angry.
    Toby grinned. “If you’re not ready, Ernie…”
    The young man shot him an ocular dagger before continuing with a wild, surreal story